NPR is reporting that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, has been shot outside of a grocery store on the corner of Ina and Oracle roads in Tucson. Giffords and some of her staff were holding an event on the street corner when an unidentified man ran up and started shooting. Five other people were also injured.

Giffords was rushed to the University Medical Center in Tuscon. The gunman was taken into custody. We'll update when more details come through.

UPDATE: Gawker's Adrian Chen spoke to an eyewitness who says that the gunman walked up to Giffords and shot her in the head first. After shooting her he opened fire on the others, and was then tackled by a member of Giffords' staff. The shooter is described as being in his mid-to-late 20s, who looked like a "fringe character."

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The mighty US of A is doomed if the collaborators in this (surprisingly well-written in some ways) series of attack posts below is any indication of our panicky reactivity and lack of true sorrow and reflection, regardless of the (now almost nothing but) theatrics of the ridiculous idiots of either red or blue stripe (wake up, children, they're the children of mobsters, lazy rich people, etc, not really public servants, except, sadly as Congressmen or women.) I used to love the USA's attitude to the rest of the world. It was high-spirited, in control, demented, childlike and raw. As a Canadian runaway, I watched in mute worship. Now, this spirit is reduced to almost nothing, while its own residents take politics WAY too seriously and other human life way too casually, viciously, even in emails and posts, American attacking American. Wake up, the people stoking your media fires don't care about you.The poor woman

Representative Giffords has died, as have 4 others, one of which was a small child. I would hope the moderators here will remove the tasteless and cruel remarks of Dconklin58, for exploiting this tragedy based on his or her sick ideology.

jokyfo is an instigator...will say ANYTHING to look big and make you react. Probably a ten yr old girl using big words for the first time LOL...whatch...he/she will write something lame in response. Ready?? 3...2..1...

Perhaps the most pernicious or insidious type of violence is politically motivated violence. Ms. Giffords---whose total recovery from any injury we all hope for---is a Democrat, so the automatic assumption is that some deranged Tea Partier has fallen off the edge and implemented the "Second Amendment" solution actually advocated by a candidate for office in the state north of Arizona (instead of being a candidate, she should have been arrested for incitement to violence!).

There are unconfirmed reports on CNN that there are "bodies on the ground" of the crime scene. If that is so, I will buy the rope and someone else can supply the tree for the perpetrator. But truly, I want the person convicted for this criminal act to be put to death most slowly and most publicly. I want the whole of the nation to see this creep snivel and beg for his life, to have the list of his failings as a human being read aloud while he is bound to a stake and lashed several times. I want to everyone to see this miscreant curse the whole of the nation---be sure he will do this---and in this curse, he wishes all of us decent people an eternity in hell. Most importantly, I want this criminal to say that God or Jesus were the voices in his head telling him to do it, for surely that is what will be heard by us all.

Please, don't expect any humanity---human kindness---from me for perpetrators of political violence. I am a (political) liberal, to be sure, but not a turn-the-other-cheek kind of liberal. I am the liberal you want leading the point in a (cultural) civil war when it is time to go toe-to-toe with the right-wing fundamentalists increasing in ever larger numbers in this country. And don't see my vigor in defending against violence with violence as hypocrisy. It's justice or revenge...but it is not unprovoked...and that is the quintessential difference.

SEE? PERFECT Example...a bunch of people have been shot, and you guys can do is bitch about what the other people are writing about. Nobody talks anymore. It's ALWAYS a battle to prove who is right. Left, Right..WTF!! Whatever happened to HUMAN!! A-fucking-MAZING!! Ya'll need to go take a deep look into the mirror...wow

No one should be targeted and shot no matter what their political affiliation is. There are many politicians with whom I do not agree, but shooting or killing them is the LAST thing on my mind. Second Amendment remedies are not the solutions to political differences in a civilized society.

I'm sure you'd feel the same way if someone had done something like this to one of your family members. I don't think you would, so may God have mercy on your soul for endorsing this type of behavior on the part of anyone.

Dconklin58, given that between the nut who flew the plane into the IRS building, the professor, Amy Bishop who shot and killed four of her colleages at Duke University,(she'd also murdered her brother and threatened a professor in Boston with a bomb threat) and every other insane act over the past few years, they've all been leftists, including the census worker who hung himself, setting up the scene to make it appear he'd been murdered for insurance purposes. Instead of seeking to exploit this horrible tragedy for your corrupt ideology, why don't you say a prayer for Giffords, her staff who were shot and to help their families get through this time???

It is simple. If a low-class white guy gets shot by an illegal alien, no one covers it. But if a high ranking public official gets gunned down by an illegal the news is all over it and people will scream for blood. That is how things get done in this country. This is a tragic, but maybe some good will come from it.

"Leftist" terrorists? You vile, amoral, piece of sh*t! What ideology were ALL these recent American terrorists: Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Byron Williams, Richard Poplawski, Scott Roeder, Eric Rudolph, James Von Brunn, Jim David Adkisson, and who can forget the largest loss of life this century thanks to born-again Christian George W Bush - Shock n' Awe?

An asshole, for suggesting that rather than play your sick ideological games, where rather than feeling badly for the victims of this tragedy, you're gleeful, because it's just another opportunity for you to espouse your hatred,, that you say a prayer for Rep Giffords, her injured staff members and her family.

And you wonder why people have been drawing parallels between the left and the fascists...